Cold Waters
by nature-lover2003
Summary: Seven young people go on a camping trip to search for a "fishman". Mari, the youngest of the group, is nearly killed by the other six for no reason and gets save by the "fishman" himself. She learns that his name is Ripjaws and together plan to get back at the people who tried to kill her. (Rated T for language, suggestive content and attempted murder)


**(A/N: Aside from Ghostfreak (who's my top favorite character), Ripjaws is my favorite character in "Ben 10". Ripjaws is probably the most underrated character in the entire franchise. I really wish we saw more of him, but for some weird reason we didn't. I have a feeling it has to do with the Tennysons not really being around water very often.**

**I don't know if I've ever said this but when it comes to really popular shows (especially the action cartoons from the 2000s) my favorite characters are usually the most underrated ones. Case in point, Ripjaws was absent the entire third season of the original show and only appears once or twice in "Ultimate Alien".)**

X-x-x-X~**V**~X-x-x-X

Lake Grant, a body of water roughly four and a half miles wide and almost five hundred feet deep. The lake was named after Ulysses S. Grant himself, it was said that after the Union won the Civil War Grant and his family took a trip to the now-infamous lake.

Their first night there, he told his wife he saw some really strange lights on the water. Thinking it was a group of Rebels who refused to believe the war was over, he grabbed his rifle to protect himself. But when he went to investigate, the mysterious lights were gone.

The forests surrounding the lake wasn't the type of forest you would see on a postcard, but rather one you might see in a war movie. That's not to say it's a gritty place, it is very much full of beautiful life, but it's not the type of place you would want to go for a picnic, more like a place you would go to for a week-long hiking trip.

Despite the history behind the lake and the terrain being one of the best places to go for a hike in, there's another reason why people still visit it. In recent years there have been rumors of a fishman living in the deep waters. On one warm day in September, a group of friends were on their way there to see if this fishman was actually real or just a hoax.

The group arrived in two cars, as there were many of them and they brought a lot of items with them. They had traveled over one hundred miles to see this creature and weren't going to leave until they saw it for themselves.

There were seven people in the group, four guys and three girls. The eldest of the group was thirty-one and the youngest was seventeen.

All seven passengers got out of the two vehicles and unloaded almost as soon they parked. The youngest of the group, a girl named Mari, assumed that they were only there for a weekend camping trip and was wondering why they had brought so much stuff with them.

Once they had everything out of the cars, they started to make their way to the lake. Though it was a relatively short trip, most people in the group were complaining about how dirty it was.

Mari, however, thought it was a great place to be walking in and couldn't understand what all their complaining was about. 'It's a forest, what did you expect?' she thought sarcastically.

It took a little over half an hour, but they finally made it to their final destination. Once they found a good spot they started to set up camp for the next couple of days. It took less than an hour to set up two tents and set out seven chairs around an area that looked like where a fire pit had once been.

"Well, I dunno about you guys but I'm getting in that lake!" one of the guys, Aren, said, almost like an announcement.

"You're not afraid of the fishman?" the eldest of the group, Eric, teased. The two then started to roughhouse.

Mari's eyes widened, her blood went cold and her rate suddenly increased. "Fishman?" she whispered to herself, so that none of them would hear her.

She didn't want her 'friends' to think that she's a scared little girl. She couldn't even call them real 'friends' since they weren't. She knew them because of her brother, but she had only just met them the other day. She didn't trust them, most of them were high school dropouts and were unemployed. Originally, they invited her brother, but he was too busy with his job and his girlfriend to go with them, so they decided to take her instead for whatever reason.

The four guys went into their tent to change and the three girls went in theirs. Mari changed into a black bikini with thin white stripes. Lina and Paolette, who were twins, both put on matching dark blue and magenta bikinis.

The twins were hispanic and were the type of people who saw themselves as the most important people in the world. Even though she didn't know them very well, Mari doesn't have to be a rocket scientist to know about their jobs as escorts. And they weren't the highest dollar escorts, but not backwater prostitutes either.

The twins left before she did and she was perfectly fine with it. She stayed behind an extra minute to put on a little sunblock, even though it wasn't very sunny outside.

She grabbed her towel and walked out of the tent. When she did, she saw that everyone was already in the water and a small fire was burning where the chairs were. She placed her towel down on a rock and slowly walked into the water. It wasn't as cold as she thought it would be, but the water was still freezing.

It took a little while but eventually her entire body was in the water. There were a couple of times when she could have sworn she saw the guys staring at her or maybe this was just her imagination.

She swam some distance from them and hoped that it would remain that way, as selfish and cold-hearted as it may seem. She would rather not be around them when this entire trip was to find a creature that most of the group doesn't even believe exists. She did think this fishman was real and that was good enough reason to keep her distance from them, as paranoid as she may seem.

Since she didn't get much of a chance to admire her surroundings when they first arrived and made their way to the lake to set up camp, she decided to take it in while she had the chance. Most of the lake's surroundings consisted of very tall trees, bushes, shrubs, and boulders. Though, the trees were by far the most intriguing.

There was a fair variety of trees in the surrounding perimeter, mostly consisting of oak and pine trees, but there were two that weren't common in the area - at least to her knowledge. She saw at least one red wood and one sequoia, both of which are common in drier mountainous areas, the area they were in did get decent amounts of rain from time to time.

Needless to say she was amazed by what she saw, after all these were things she didn't exactly see very often. She even wondered if the fishman felt the same way whenever he surfaces since nearly all of the witnesses claimed to have seen him on land.

Her peaceful amazement, however, was soon interrupted when Jack, another guy in the group, shouted, "Hey! Mari, get over here! Come hang with us!"

"I'm good!" she yelled back, not really wanting to go over to them.

"Oh, come on! We came here to have fun, so come have some fun with us!" Dylan, the final group member, shouted."

'I thought we were here to see the fishman?' she mentally retorted, she of course wouldn't say this to them, so she yelled back something else instead, "No, thanks, I'm fine!"

"Oh, come on, get your ass over here! We're about to go search for the fishman!" Aren shouted.

That piqued her interest, though she should know better than to trust people she barely knew, they apparently knew more than she did about the creature. With only a second of hesitation, she swam towards them and prayed this wouldn't be something she would end up regretting.

When she reached them, Eric smirked and began his plan, "Okay, now that we're all here, we can kick this plan into effect. The fishman is rumored to have sharp teeth, so that must mean that he eats meat."

"Where are you going with this?" Mari asked, feeling very uncertain and nervous.

"Sweetie, just let him talk," Lina said in a fake friendly voice.

He continued with his plan, though it was like a hypothetical idea if anything, "Anyway, I'm thinking that he has to come up to eat or breathe or some shit eventually, right? So, maybe if we move around a lot and at least act like we're having fun then he'll want to check us out. When he surfaces I'm thinking one of us gets a hot dog or hamburger from the ice chest to get him out of the water. Once he's out and distracted, one of us will snap a picture of him and prove to the world that monsters are real."

Though she had many questions and suspicions, Mari decided not to ask why he wanted the world to know about monsters. 'If you want people to know that monsters exist, why don't you start with Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster?' she mentally retorted again.

Apparently, Dylan felt the same way and snorted, "Then why didn't ya start with the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot?"

"The Loch Ness Monster is all the way in Scotland and everyone has already taken a picture of Bigfoot," he said. "Now hurry up and have fun! I want to see the fishman."

Most of the group just laughed, but did as he said and started to enjoy their weekend trip. Mari wasn't sure if she should join them or go back to doing her own thing. She considered staying with them since she didn't know what could be the water.

After all, if there is a fishman there's strength in numbers. Then again there was the chance that the creature would target a larger group since its more people to eat, but a smaller or diverse group would just as much a chance as any other.

Sure she didn't exactly like these people, but she would never want to see them brutally killed and/or eaten. Then again, she doesn't know them at all, they're complete strangers to her, just because they just happen to be friends with her brother doesn't mean that they wouldn't leave her to be a meal for a monster.

After some deep thought, she decided to act like she was having fun, but made sure to keep a safe distance from them. She just wanted to be safe unless a certain group of immature dropouts and idiots got any funny ideas.

* * *

Hours passed and no matter how hard they tried the fishman never surfaced. They stayed in the water until an hour before sunset then got out and started to cook their dinner. They sat around the fire and waited. They chatted and told jokes and gossip in the meantime.

Unbeknownst to all of them, the top portion of a shadowy figure's head poked out from the lake. It appeared to be watching them and at first they just looked like a normal group of dumb kids, until it saw how uncomfortable one of the girls was. The figure went back underwater when the girl it spotted looked in it's direction.

It took thirty minutes before all the food was finally cooked. Jack put the food onto paper plates, while Aren got all the toppings, bread and condiments together.

"Who wants cheese on theirs?" Jack asked. Mari and Eric raised their hands. He gave a thumbs up and Alen started to thinly slice a block of cheese. "Come and get it!"

Mari, Eric, Dylan and the twins got up and went over to make their dinner. Jack, the twins, and Eric got hotdogs while Mari, Dylan and Aren got hamburgers. After getting their meals, they all sat around the fire that was almost a bonfire by that point.

"So, anyway, there I am on the side of this cliff with these coyotes all around me," Aren was telling everyone a story with a mouthful of hamburger, "it looks like their about to eat me, but I jump off and fall two hundred feet to the ground. I landed on my feet and shattered both my legs and fractured my spine."

"Then how are you still walking?" Jack retorted, swallowing a bite from his hotdog. "There's no way you can survive something like that and still be walking."

Aren sulked and took another bite from his hamburger. Everyone was laughing at that and what Jack said. Mari rolled her eyes, but she was smiling too. She wasn't smiling because she thought it was funny, but rather to prevent them from picking on her for not at least giving a small smile.

She stopped smiling and went back to silently eating her meal. Apparently, peaceful meals are a thing of the past because the guys decided that it was a good time to start messing with her.

"Hey, Mari, how's the burger?" Dylan asked.

"Good," she answered simply and quietly.

"I think you would've liked eating a hotdog better," he winked at her, much to her disgust.

"Yeah, I think so too," Eric agreed. He put his hand on her leg, right above her knee, and massaged it.

She smacked his hand away and yelled at him with clear disgust, "Ew! Keep your hands away from me!"

She stood up from her chair and left to go to the bathroom. Once she was sure she was a safe distance away from them, she crouched down and did her business.

When she stood up and pulled up her light gray capris, someone came up behind her. The person knocked her to the vegetation-covered ground and everything went completely black.

She woke up sometime later with a groan and a painful headache. She tried to lift her arm to rub her head to soothe the throbbing pain, but something stopped her. She was able to crane her neck in such a way to see what was keeping her restrained. She saw that she was tied with ropes with thick chains wrapped over the ropes, making any possibility of escape impossible for someone like her.

The other six people in the group were close by with nets and guns in hand. They surrounded her when they heard the noises she made when she attempted to lift her arm. She wiggled around a little bit in a sad attempt to break free as they circled her, but to no prevail.

"Nice try, bitch, but there's no escape for you," Aren said mockingly with a smirk.

"Let me go!" she hissed through gritted teeth as she continued to struggle.

Dylan crouched down beside her, "Sorry, sweetheart, but can't do that." He stroked the side of her face, much to her disgust as she turns away from him.

"What do you want from me?" she asked with a sneer.

"It's not what we want from you, it's more like what you're going to do," Paolette said.

"What she means is: you're going to be bait," Eric explained.

"What?! Bait?!" she shouted, very fearful.

"Yup. Originally, your brother was going to be the bait, but he couldn't come, so we took you instead," he explained the original plan.

She felt her heart and stomach drop as she heard what he was saying. They were planning to let her brother die just to lure out a monster that may not even exist?! Just how low can these greedy _assholes_ be?!

"Let me get this straight! You were okay with killing my brother to attract a monster that might not even exist?!" she yelled at the top of her lungs.

Eric shrugged, "Small price to pay to prove to the whole world that we aren't alone."

"What do you mean?" she questioned through her painfully gritted teeth.

"Well, you see, years ago I read something about the idea that monsters and demons in mythology were real. Nowadays, people think that these stories were just the result of an overactive imagination, but when we show them the fishman, they'll know that monsters and demons are very real," he explained his motives.

It didn't take her long to piece together every piece of the puzzle. "Oh, I see, and those nets and guns are to capture and kill it. That way you can go around telling people that you killed the creature in retaliation for killing me and no one would ever suspect a thing," she concluded.

"You're pretty smart, Mari," he stood up and took something out of his backpack.

She heard the familiar sound of someone pulling on a piece of duct tape. He turned back to her and tore off a piece of tape from the roll in his hand. He put the piece over her mouth to muffle her cries.

"It's a real shame that you won't live long enough to tell anyone about this," he finished. "Let's throw her in!"

All four of the guys picked her up and walked towards the lake. She squirmed against her bindings and her muffled cries rang through her ears, but never got further than that; not even her captures heard her. Once they were knee-deep into the lake, they threw her into the cool water as far as they could and walked back to their camp to wait.

She didn't sink right away, but she was certainly going under. She continued to struggle to break free while her head was still above water; however, it wouldn't remain that way for much longer.

She took in a deep breath as she went below the surface. She managed to free her right hand and fortunately for her she could see underwater and there was just enough light coming from the full moon, so she could see what she was doing.

Unfortunately, she started to feel fatigued due to holding her breath for too long and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't swim up to the surface to breathe and she was sinking deeper. Her vision was starting to go dark and air bubbles were coming out of her nose. As a last ditch effort before she lost the rest of her air, she began to tear at the chains and ropes with her one free hand, but to no avail.

Her last little bit of air slipped past her lips and she lost all consciousness. Water slowly flooded into her body through her nose as she continued to sink deeper and deeper into the cold water.

Not too far away from where she was, someone or rather something heard her getting thrown into the water. At first it thought it was just the people it saw earlier, until it heard grunting and chains clanging together. The sound was faint, but it knew that no one, not even someone with the brain of a Neanderthal, would take a chain into the water with them, so it decided to investigate.

It didn't have to swim far to see what all the noise was about. It saw the young girl it noticed earlier tied up and drowning. It quickly swam to the unconscious girl and freed her by biting off the chains and ropes. It wrapped one arm around her waist and swam as quickly as possible to get her to safety.

* * *

When Mari finally started to come through, she felt water droplets fall onto her face. She started to move around a little to get a little bit of a sense of where she could be. The one thing she already knew was that she definitely wasn't anywhere near her attempted killers.

The first thing she felt was fur, it was underneath her in several layers like a bed or sleep mat. The fur was soft and damp, but also felt slightly coarse. It had an unusual scent combination of fish, blood, pine trees, pine cones, algae, moss and she could very faintly catch the smell rotting and freshly killed animals.

The next thing she felt was wet rock and small puddles. The entire floor of wherever she was at was jagged, wet rock, but not sharp enough to pierce the skin. She could also feel mud, soggy sticks, dead leaves, pieces of some pine cones, pine needles, grass and tiny bones and bone fragments.

When she finally opened her eyes the first thing she saw were charcoal-colored stalactites. She turned her head and saw stalagmites as well as nearly everything she felt with her hand.

Along with what she felt she also saw something she wished she never saw; a half-eaten fish just inches from her hand. She squeaked quietly and pulled her hand back to her. She had a massive fear of dead animals, just seeing all their organs and blood just sitting on the ground or their dead eyes staring at her as if still alive petrified her.

She decided to take a look around and see if she could find a way back to the campsite. As soon as she stood up on the mat, she felt the fur on the soles of her feet. She was barefoot and wondered where the sandals she put on after getting out of the lake earlier went.

She carefully took a step off the mat and onto the rocky ground. She shivered as she stepped onto the cold, wet, rough cave floor. Carefully, she took one painfully slow and small step after the other.

She peered around a stalagmite and saw what looked like a fire pit, judging from all the ashes surrounding a pile of burnt kindling. She also saw a woodpile about thirty feet away. She could also make out what looked to be tiny fragments of bone and bits of flesh, all of which were burned to a crisp.

She also saw an old pot sitting next to the fire pit, but there didn't appear to be anything inside of it. Inside the pot was a wooden stick, possibly a spoon, but she couldn't tell.

While scanning the space, she noticed a faint blue glow coming from a cave transversal from where she stood. With nothing to lose, she decided to check it out.

After what felt like hours of painfully slow walking, she found the source of the mysterious blue glow. The source was coming from a pool of water. From a distance the pool looked shallow, but when she got a closer look, she saw that it actually lead to an underwater cave, quite possibly going all the way to the lake.

As she observed the pool, she noticed a small yellow glow coming through the underwater cave and it was getting closer. Not knowing what it was she had two options: stay and see what that light was or go back to the cavern she woke up in. Curiosity, however, got the better of her, so she decided to wait and see, but hid behind a corner just in case.

She watched as a creature emerged from the water with plants and dead animals in its arms. The creature dropped everything it held when it came out of the water, giving her the chance to look at it. It looked like a cross behind an anglerfish and a humanoid alien.

It had large jaws with razor sharp teeth with a yellowish tinge, grayish-white eyes and a green esca with a yellow tip. It was covered with gray scales with a light greenish tinge. It also had a green dorsal fin, green razor-like fins on its forearms, green webbing in between its four-fingered hands with razor sharp claws and in between its talon-like feet and a black loincloth with thin white strips, similar to her bikini. She was still wearing her swimsuit underneath a white blouse and her light gray capris.

She didn't have to be Albert Einstein to know that this was the fishman, but for some reason she wasn't afraid. Sure she was a little scared, but not petrified, after all it did save her from drowning.

She hesitated on whether or not to approach the creature, if it had just gotten back from hunting then it could still be drunk on adrenaline. Apparently, the loose rocks underneath her feet made the decision for her. When she moved her foot out of nervousness it caused some pebbles to roll away.

The fishman heard this noise, "Who's there?" It's voice was very deep, raspy and monstrous.

She came out from behind the corner with a timid look on her face, "Uh, hi."

"You're awake," he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, "that's a relief."

"Um, I know this is a stupid question to ask, but where are we?" she asked.

"An underwater cave," he answered. "It's the only place where I can be without worrying about people trying to find me."

"But aren't you worried about scuba divers or mini-subs?" she asked.

"No, not really. My cave is deep enough that no diver would be able to swim down here without feeling the effects of underwater pressure. And I'm not worried about mini-subs, no one could be that stupid," he responded.

She smiled, "Sounds like you gave this a lot of thought."

"I guess." He lifted up everything he brought with him.

"Do you need help with that?" she asked.

He shook his head, "No, I'm good. I'm used to carrying this much stuff anyway."

He walked into the cave that led to the space she woke up in. She tried to walk alongside him, but the rough floor against her bare feet made it difficult.

He stopped and turned his back at her to ask, "You alright?"

"Yeah, this floor is just really painful to walk on," she replied. "I wish I knew where my sandals went."

"You weren't wearing sandals when I found you," he informed her. "Maybe you lost them in the lake."

'Maybe,' she thought with lingering suspicion.

Once in the area where the space was, he set down everything next to the fire pit. He got down on the ground and started to dig in the ash and gravel, looking for something.

"What are you looking for?" she asked.

"My fire starter," he answered.

"Do you need help?" she asked again.

"Yeah, can you look over there?" he pointed his claw at the other side of the pit.

She started to search around the area across from where he was. She searched through multiple layers of ash, gravel, sand and dirt, but she didn't find anything.

He had better luck than her, however. After digging around for a few minutes he finally found what he's been looking for. "I found it."

He struck the magnesium striker-bar with a small striker knife. It didn't start the first time and sparks flew with each new strike. After a few more times of try and fail, the wood finally ignites. He added a couple of pieces of wood from the woodpile to the growing fire.

He started to slice open and skin his catches with his claws, removing the organs, bones, fur and scales from each carcass. Not wanting to watch the bloody actions he was doing, she went back to the furry bed she woke up on.

He burned every body part he thought to be unimportant, mostly consisting of bones, scales, heads and inedible organs. The fats of the body parts caused them to burn faster in the flames like a piece of meat on a barbeque.

After removing everything unimportant and inedible, he cut up and cooked the fresh meat on the fire. While the meat was cooking, he went back to the cavern where the pool was with the pot from his cave. After getting some fresh water in the pot, he went back to his cave and placed the pot over the flames to boil it, after fully cooking the meat of course.

Mari could smell the food cooking and felt a prolonged growl in her stomach. "Wow. I guess I was asleep longer than I thought," she muttered to herself with a smile.

She stood up from the bed and went to see what was cooking. She saw him stirring something in the pot and pour it into two bowls, no doubt items left behind by careless campers.

He noticed her standing next to a stalagmite and held up the two bowls, "Oh, hey. I was just about to come get you."

They ate in silence with the occasional glance here and there, but never spoke to one another. Probably because neither really knew what to say or even how to start a conversation at all.

Finally wanting to break this awkward silence, she started to ask him, "Sorry, I forgot to ask this, but what's your name?"

"Ripjaws," he replied, "and don't worry about forgetting to ask me my name because I forgot to ask yours too!" He started to laugh, as if to tell her that there's nothing to be worried or embarrassed about.

She started to laugh too, "Good point, I'm Mari."

"I like your name, it's nice," he told her.

She blushed for a split second before replying, "Thanks, I like yours too. It's pretty cool." She then asked, "So, do you get a lot of visitors down here?"

"Not unless it's dead or rescued in your case," he answered. "You're not the first person I've saved, but you are the first person I've ever brought here."

After a couple more minutes of their light-hearted conversation, the topic changed serious when he decided to ask her a question he's been wanting to ask since he found her tied up and drowning, "Who threw you into the water?"

Her expression suddenly turned angry, "Six 'friends' of my older brother. They came here to find you and wanted to use _my brother_ as bait! He was too busy so they decided to throw me in instead!"

"What?! How low can they be?!" he exclaimed, clearly shocked and upset, almost scaring her.

"I know right? And I'm pretty sure most of them don't even think you exist!" her voice was almost a shout.

"I think I saw them up there while I was waiting for something to kill," he told her.

"They're probably waiting for you to get yourself trapped in their nets," she explained.

He laughed at that, "Yeah, right! Not like I haven't seen anything like that before, but throwing someone into the lake is a first."

"They don't just have nets, they have guns too. Their plan is to catch and kill you," she informed.

"Why?" he asked. "That's a stupid plan."

"I don't know, one of the guys said that it was to prove that we're not alone or that monsters exist or something like that," she shrugged. "Chances are they're still there, probably thinking of a way to explain my 'disappearance' to the police."

"The police out here are on my side," he pointed at himself.

"How and why?" she questioned with wide eyes.

"Awhile back I made the mistake of surfacing while the cops were searching the lake for a group of poachers. They thought I was some kind of creature looking for people to eat. I told them I was just surfacing to look around the area to see what all the fuss was about. I later helped them with capturing the poachers. Ever since then, whenever someone comes to them saying they saw me, they say they don't believe them and that it was probably just their imagination," he explained.

"If that's the case, then do you think they would believe their story about my 'disappearance'?" she asked.

"Probably not, like I said before, you're not the first person I've saved, there's a low disappearance rate in this area because of that. So they know that if someone went missing in this area, there's probably some foul play involved," he responded. "Why?"

"I know this might make me sound like a bad person, but can you help me get them arrested?" she asked.

When she asked this, he was chugging down the rest of his food. He set down his empty bowl, "I thought you'd never ask."

* * *

"Dude! You're wasting your fucking time!" Jack shouted at Eric.

He had a valid point. It had been roughly twenty-four hours since they had thrown Mari into the lake and so far the fishman was a no-show.

"No, I'm not! You're wasting _my _time!" he snapped.

Aren punched him in the jaw, "Wake up and smell the shit, man! Mari's been dead for a whole day now and the fishman hasn't shown himself. And you wanna know why? Because he doesn't fucking exist!"

"Yeah! And now we have to find some way to explain to her brother and the cops about her death! How are we going to do that?!" Dylan yelled.

"This _vacación _was a mistake," Lina said to her twin.

"_Sí_. What's the point of them bringing us with them if _no quieren tener sexo con nosotros_?" Paolette agreed.

Just before the argument between the four childish men could get any worse, all six watched as the silhouette of a woman arose from the water and walked towards them. They all stopped what they were doing and huddled around each other in fear. Eventually, the silhouette walked into the light of the fire and they could see that it was Mari.

"Mari?!" exclaimed Eric. "But you're dead, we-"

"Threw me into the lake," she finished for him. She crossed her arms and glared at them, "Big mistake."

A geyser suddenly erected from the lake and a dark figure came out of the water and landed next to her. He stood upright and revealed himself to be Ripjaws.

The twins, Jack and Dylan all collapsed in fear as soon as they saw his large jaw with his huge, sharp teeth and his equally sharp claws. Leaving Eric and Aren at their mercy.

"W-Who or wh-what are you?" Eric asked, his voice full of fear.

"He's the very thing you tried to lure out by killing me and, hey, it worked," she replied with clear anger and sarcasm.

"He's the fishman!" he shouted in Aren's ear.

"Call me Ripjaws," his tone was very calm and casual.

"Let's get out of here!" Aren yelled.

"Wow. They're just going to leave the others behind, that's harsh," she uttered to herself and her new friend.

"I'm not that surprised, they did try to kill you," he pointed out.

"True," she agreed with a shrug.

They ran in the direction of the path they came down when they first arrived, where the cars were. It was very dark out, so they didn't know exactly where to go. In their confusion, they stopped in their tracks and looked around for the pathway.

Eric then suddenly turned back to them and pointed his gun at them. He pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. He checked the chamber and found that it was empty. He suddenly grabbed the gun holster Aren had and aimed it at them.

"What the fuck are doing?!" Aren shouted. "Let's get the hell out of here!"

"No! I'm not leaving until I kill that thing!" he yelled.

Ripjaws suddenly appeared before him as he fired in Mari's direction. The two fought as he tried to grab the weapon, but Eric refused to give up and fired one shot into the ground, close to his feet.

"Give it up!" he dug his claws into his wrist.

He shouted in pain, "I'll never stop until I kill you!"

He narrowed his eyes and glared down on him, he raised his fist and brought it down on his head like a judge would with his gavel. He dropped the gun and held his head to stop the pain. He punched him in the face and knocked him out cold.

He turned his attention to Aren, who stood just thirty feet away and watched the whole struggle. He ran away almost as soon as the fight between them was over.

He looked around the campsite and found a spare net lying on the ground. He threw the net at him, just as a fisherman would do out at sea, and he got tangled up in it. He came up behind him and punched him in the back of his head, knocking him out too.

Meanwhile, Mari had just gotten off the phone with police. "It'll be a couple minutes before the cops arrive to come get them."

"I better get back in the lake, then," he told her.

"Why?" she asked as he walked into the water.

"You'll see," he replied as he went underwater.

The police arrived soon afterwards and an officer came up to her. He was older and she could tell by his patches and badges that he was the sheriff.

"Are you the one that called us?" he questioned.

"Yes, I am," she responded.

"Can you tell me what happened here?" he questioned again.

"Yes, I can. They asked me to come with them on this trip after my brother said that he was too busy," she explained.

Before she could go any further, he asked, "Why was he too busy to come?"

"He had work today and promised his girlfriend that he would take her out later," she answered.

"Okay, continue," he said.

She continued, "One of the guys, Eric, said that he wanted to find the fishman, but he never showed up."

"But it did! We saw it!" Jack, who was now awake and being shoved into a police car, shouted.

"You people tried to kill me!" she yelled at him.

"They tried to kill you?" he questioned again.

She nodded, "Yes and he said that they originally planned to kill my brother."

He wrote down everything she said, "Alright, we'll see that they get punished for their crimes."

They soon left to take them to jail, leaving her behind. One of the deputies offered to take her to the station, but she refused.

Ripjaws came out of the lake as soon as they all left. "Hey, you alright?" he asked.

"Yeah, my brother will be here to take me home in an hour," she replied. "I'm sure his girlfriend will understand."

"Well, since we have time, wanna come back into the lake?" he asked again.

She shrugged, "Sure, why not?"

She took off her blouse and capris and set them down on a rock. He unconsciously ogled her as she took off her clothes and walked into the water with him.

They swam around for a little while, until they just decided to look up at the stars. The sight above them was absolutely breathtaking, never before had she ever seen so many stars so clearly. And the moonlight shining down the water was just as majestic as it was dazzling.

It was as if the darkness around them had been chased away by the light coming from the starry night sky. He wrapped his scaly arms around her when she started to shiver in the cool water.

Before, when they were swimming up to the surface to get back at her attempted killers, his arms felt slimy and somewhat frigid, but now felt warm around her. His arms felt as warm as the fire in his cave in the cold waters of the lake.

X-x-x-X~**V**~X-x-x-X

**(A/N: Holy shit! Over 6,000 words! This is my longest single-chapter story to date!**

**Interesting Facts about this story:**

**The story behind Lake Grant takes heavy inspiration from accounts and folklore from across the US and parts of the world during the colonial and Civil War eras. Including the story that started the mystery of Oak Island.**

**The last two paragraphs take a lot of inspiration from the song "Whispers in the Dark" by Skillet. I actually got the idea for writing this from an AMV on Ripjaws.**

**That's all for the facts and I'm sorry that there's not more of them. I've been working on a "Ben 10"/"Teen Titans" crossover story. The first chapter should be done within the first week or so of the new year.**

**So, with that said, Happy New Years Eve and Happy New Year!)**


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